Award For Most Uncomfortable Dinner

Mad Men, S05E07

Megan's parents came to town, and we saw that their have an unhappy relationship.  Megan came up with a great pitch that gained them the Heinz account.  Peggy thought Abe wanted to propose to her, but he actually wanted to move in together.  Don was given an award for his letter that spoke about smoking's hand in cancer and other health risks.  Megan's parents, Sally, and Roger all accompanied Don to the award dinner.  The night revealed a lot for those who attended it.

I wondered what kind of parents that Megan had, considering her personality.  They seem to not be much of a reflection about Megan's character, as they have a history of bickering and making each other miserable.  It was clear that Marie was starved for affection, but luckily she was more impressed with Roger than Don and didn't do anything inappropriate with her own daughter's husband.  From what I've learned about Emile, he just seems dispassionate about the way his own life has turned out and takes it out on others.  Even his daughter isn't exempt from his negativity.  It's no wonder that Marie, who claimed to be once full of life and adventure, would end up fooling around with Roger, with his renewed look on life.

I don't think much is wrong with what Roger and Marie did (because they are adults), but I wonder if Sally will get over walking in on them while Marie was pleasuring Roger on her knees.  Maybe she'll appreciate staying with her grandmother a bit more than going to the "dirty" city to hang with her dad's kind of people.  Before that happened, I thought that Sally and Roger were so adorable together.  He was pretending she was his date, and Sally acted as his encouragement so he could work the room.  I think Sally was having fun pretending to be an adult (nice dress, conversation about business) until she got a glimpse of some of the other things adults did.

Don may not be the father of the year, but I still think he's a great dad.  He has all the opportunities to be absent his children's lives, but he's there for them a decent amount.  I just loved how he was stunned by seeing Sally in a beautiful and more grown-up dress, but told her to tone it down.  Emile made Don's fear of his daughter growing up too quickly worse by saying that all girls eventually "spread their legs and fly away."  Thanks to that funny misquote, I'm sure that Don will be keeping a closer watch on Sally whenever she's around.  It was really sweet after he got his award he claimed that seeing a beautiful girl who would be ready for makeup one day, but not today, made him happier than being honored.  Aww.  It's gonna be rough for him when she starts to get rebellious and nothing he can say will make her listen.  I think Sally is a good person, but she's definitely got a curiosity that will probably make her a wild teenager.

Instead of worrying about his daughter leaving childhood, Don should be most worried that his image is indeed as negative as Roger warned it would be before he wrote the letter.  At the dinner, Ed told him that no one wanted to work with him there at the party because he's not the trustworthy type.  I can't argue with that.  For Don, business is business.  I don't think that he ever considered any of the clients to be his real friends and would actually stick his neck out for one of them.  And why would he?  With slimeballs like Heinz, I wouldn't promise my loyalty to them when they are just as likely to cut off their business for the smallest thing that dissatisfied them.  There's only so much ass-kissing one can do for a customer before it becomes counterproductive.

Speaking of Heinz, I was almost glad that Raymond's wife let it be known that they were going to fire SCDP because I've had it with him taking advantage of them.  He wants so much, but gives so little back.  And sure, that's the nature of their business, but it's been a while since they've had such a shitty client.  I prepared to watch Don get a little revenge on Raymond, which I could have cheered on, but Megan smartly decided to give the pitch she had been working on with Don and they secured the account.  Way to go Megan!  However, she increasingly looked less and less thrilled about her success, the more Don and the others applauded her.  I thought she was really passionate about copywriting, but it looks like that's not where her heart is.  Emile further suggested that Megan is settling for a different kind of success, but not the kind that she has always dreamed of.  Now I'm wondering if she'll try her hand in acting or performing again, despite that she's made a significant mark in their advertising firm.  I worry that Don, who seemed excited that he and Megan could work together so well, might not be so supportive if she decided to give up on advertising (or Megan may stay in the business and be unhappy but too scared to quit).

As far as Peggy goes, I thought that Abe was going to dump her.  When he asked her to move in, I thought she was disappointed.  I think that only when Joan praised her and made it seem very romantic did Peggy see what a wonderful gesture it was for him to ask.  I mean, I thought Peggy would be ready to punch Megan in the face for winning over Heinz when Peggy had failed at it, but she was so satisfied with her love life that she was genuinely happy for Megan's achievement.  Wow.  Peggy's mother, of course, wasn't happy at all, but that was no surprise. I just didn't think she'd be such a stubborn bitch to tell Peggy that if she was lonely to just keep getting cats until she died.  Because being a cat lady is much better than "living in sin" with her loving boyfriend.  Maybe she'll never get married once they move in together, but at least Peggy will have someone there to love her and take care of her.  Is a cat going to make her feel good after a horrible day at work and make sure she doesn't drink herself to death?  Peggy's mom needs to get the stick out of her ass and stop trying to push her ideals onto her daughter (her mom ain't no saint either!).

I wonder if Don can do something to change his business perspective so that they could draw in more clients who can trust their firm.  Hopefully the dissatisfaction that Megan seems to have with her job won't start to tear at her marriage.  I don't care too much about what happens to Peggy as long as she's concentrating on her own life.  I like the new Roger, and I'm eager to see if he can turns things around in his professional life.  With a lot of things going to the dump with everyone else, it would be nice to see someone making some positive strides.

Heinz, Howard Johnson's, and LSD

Mad Men, S05E06

This episode was broken into three stories told from different perspectives.  First, Peggy had a blowout with Heinz during her last attempt to please the client with the ad they asked for.  After she had been successfully fired from the project, she learned a little about Max and gained a little perspective on things in life she had been neglecting for work.  Roger and Jane went to a party held by her friends where they all took LSD.  While high, Roger and Jane discussed the problems in their marriage and rationally agreed that they should get a separation.  However, the next day Roger was the only one who still seemed calmly resolute about the divorce, while Jane was surprised that they had made such a decision.  Don whisked off Megan to visit a Howard Johnson's instead of doing work, and Megan revealed her displease of how he was mixing their married lives with their work lives.  After they fought, Don left her at the diner and lost her when he returned and spent the night worried out of his mind about her.  He found her at home, but they continued to fight until Megan realized how scared Don had been.  The next day, Don and Megan seemed to have gotten past the horrible day, but Don realized that he couldn't afford to keep putting his wife before his job anymore.

I liked that Peggy spoke her mind at the Heinz meeting even though the client was so angry at her.  It was the sort of thing that Don would have done, except he would have managed to convince the client that he was right (usually) and he wouldn't have had the danger of getting fired.  That client was such a typical client asshole who doesn't appreciate the creative process.  It's the kind of person who hires someone to do work for them but expects them to pull ideas out of thin air that will exceed their unknown expectations.  Even Peggy, who sometimes can be irritating, didn't deserve to be treated like she wasn't doing her job just because the client was too lazy to tell her what he really wanted or too stupid to see that she was going him good stuff.  When Pete told her that she had been pulled off the Heinz account, I was so angry!  I was also a little angry at Don because he wouldn't have let that happen (under normal situations).  Cosgrove did his best to support Peggy, but Don would have made sure that Peggy didn't even explode at the client in the first place.  It was ballsy of her, but I respect her outrage.  I hope that they lose that Heinz account (even though, I'm sure they need it) because that client is too much of an ungrateful dick.

Another person who was irritating me was Max.  He kept making Peggy sound like she was being nosy when he was talking to his father on the phone and when he popped up at work.  Just because he didn't want to share (at first) that his relationship with  father was unusual, didn't give him the right to act so icily.  Geez.  Calm down!  I was still angry at him, even when he finally told Peggy that he was an alien (I was annoyed that he was speaking so seriously that he was) because he had been told that he was born in a concentration camp and had no idea who his real parents were.  If that turned out to be true, that would be an amazing story, but Max seems insane so I'm hesitant to take his word for it.  It would explain why he's not the most sociable guy at the office.  I swear he only likes Don, whom he doesn't even know yet.

Onto the Roger story.  It's been a little painful to watch him and his wife lately.  He just seems like he'd be happy if he threw her off a bridge, and I'm not so sure why or how it got like that.  Also, I felt bad when Roger tried to play hooky with his good pal Don, but Don took his plan and just decided to take his wife with him instead.  It's times like that when I feel so bad for Roger.  He just wanted to have a little fun, but Don was shutting him out.  I expected his bad mood to continue through the party, but things got interesting when they all took the drugs.  I never expected it to go in that direction, but I was glad it did.  He just seemed to connect with his wife and talk about things they never seemed to be able to when sober.  It was pretty amazing.  And it seemed sweet at first.  However, the next morning when Jane didn't even realize what they had talked about, I started to feel bad for him again.  Roger seemed lighter and happier now that he thought his wife had been waiting for one of them to bring up divorce, but she seemed like she was the  opposite.  Also, she mentioned that divorce would be "very expensive."  Well, I guess it's not going to be nice and easy and she's probably going to take a lot of his money.  With Roger not exactly being the go-to guy at SCDP, he may not be able to afford a fund-sucking divorce.  At the end, Roger was clicking his heels, but will he still be able to do that if he doesn't become the top dog at work again and Jane takes him for every penny he's got?

The saddest story, by far, although it didn't look like it would have been, was Don's.  It was just a disaster, to say the least.  I knew that Megan was upset that Don took her away from work, but I didn't know that their argument was going to be so bad.  I understand why he would be angry at her for taking a low blow and asking why he didn't call his mother, but that was no excuse to leave her at the Howard Johnson's.  I have no idea how long he left her there, but they had intended to stay there overnight (I guess since they had a room?), so I don't know why she didn't just go to her room there.  I started to think something bad had happened to her too when Don came back and couldn't find her no matter how long he waited.  I even was scared that she might have been the one who had had the accident in the pool (even though they said it involved kids).  It was a relief when she was at home, but it was pretty scary when she was running from Don afterwards.  I thought he was going to choke her or something!  The thing is, Don never apologized for leaving her there and making her take a 6 and half hour bus ride back home.  I hope that at some point he did, but we just didn't see it.  I think that Megan understood that Don was terrified for her life.  I didn't think that he would get so worried that he would be holding onto her for dear life as if they had just gotten past a life-threatening experience.

To make things worse, Cooper was waiting for him at work the next day to lay down some truth.  I've been thinking it, but I still felt bad when Cooper had to tell him that things were getting out of hand with his lovey-dovey mode.  Then again, I guess it had to be Cooper to tell him because which of his other co-workers was going to have the balls or the right to tell him?  It's true that Don hasn't been balancing his work well with his love life.  He definitely has been going overboard with his focus on Megan, but I loved it about him.  He was just happy about something, and I don't think he ever had been about work, even when he does his job well.  I don't know if that talk with Cooper is going to make him turn into a hard ass again or if he's going to find a way to put more balance in his life.  I don't really want to see him miserable at work again, unless it means that he's going to be yelling more at Peggy and Max.

What sad stories, but wonderfully told.  It was nice to see the same day unfold but from different characters' points of views.  Once again, the scale of happiness has tipped and Don may have to go back to being a bit unhappy now that Roger seems to be in better spirits.  Peggy is always a bit in the middle, so there's not much of a change for her (nor was it that shocking when she gave a stranger a hand job--oh, Peggy).  I just hope that if anything comes about from her story it's that she finds out more about Max.  He's irritating as hell, but perhaps his background story could explain why he's not as pleasant as he could be.